What are the Adventures of Young Indiana Jones?

In this section you will find overviews and resources for the 22 chapters of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, plus the accompanying 94 documentaries.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, were created from the Emmy-award winning ABC television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles which ran from 1992-1996. The series of 22 feature-length chapters takes a younger Indiana Jones all over the world where he experiences many of the most important events of the early twentieth century.

In 2007, the 22 films were released in three DVD sets and included a total of 94 documentaries:

Volume OneChapters 1-7

Volume TwoChapters 8-15

Volume ThreeChapters 16-22

Documentaries94 Documentaries

Young Indiana Jones serves as a perfect vehicle for revealing early 20th Century history to students. Following Indy as he travels across the globe gets students excited and involved as the stories unfold. If you’re still not convinced consider the 94 documentaries that now accompany the series. Each one ranges from 20-30 minutes in length, perfect for classroom use. Produced by Emmy-Award winning filmmaker, David Schneider, each documentary is skillfully edited to be highly informative while avoiding the boredom that plagues many documentaries.

How can I purchase the DVD's?

We don't sell the DVD's on our website, in fact we don't sell anything. Our site simply serves as a resource to the educational side of Indiana Jones. If you wish to order the DVD's, visit any online store (or physical store) that sells DVD's. However, we recommend:

Additional Information

George Lucas and Rick McCallum discuss their vision for The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones.

Check out the trailer!

Press Videos

The short clips highlighted below were released with the press kit for the 2007 DVD release. Take a look at them to learn even more about The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones!

This clip displays the Indiana Jones style action and adventure that is found throughout the series.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones was filmed on location around the world.

See the many guest stars who were featured in the series.

Indy learns the true cost of revolution.

Indy learns about love from Sigmund Freud.

A short video that demonstrates the Interactive Timeline that comes on the bonus disc.

Educator Uses for Young Indiana Jones

Each Volume of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones is packed with resources that are perfect for classroom integration! Below are five reasons why you should consider using the series in your classroom!

Special thanks to George Lucas, Rick McCallum, & David Schneider for the great work they have done in making this series and the documentaries!

In addition to participating in major world events, Indy also interacts with some of the most well known people of the time period. Examples include: Thomas Edison, T.E. Lawrence, the Red Baron, Pancho Villa, Al Capone, and many more!

Documentary preview for Unhealed Wounds: The Life of Ernest Hemingway. This documentary accompanies the Young Indy Chapter Tales of Innocence found in Volume 3 of The Adventures of Young Indiana JonesNo video? Watch in Flash!

Reason 3: The Interactive Timeline

The bonus disc that comes with each volume contains an Interactive Timeline that allows viewers to choose a year between 1899 & 1925. Each selected year shows major events that occured in the world. Many of the events featured in each year are "clickable" and reveal more information about the event or person, plus resources (see Reason 4 for an example).

Reason 4: The Additional Information & Resources

From the Interactive Timeline or Indy's Journal (see Reason 5) one may choose a topic, person, or event and be taken to a resource page where there is a preview of the accompanying documentary. Each resource page features descriptions, pictures and audio, website links, a list of relevant films and book resources, and other relevant documentaries in the series.

Reason 5: Indy's Journal

Indy's Journal is a great resource for educators to review the events of each Chapter and have quick links to the available resources and documentaries. The journal comes with the bonus disc in each volume.

Extra Credit:

Lecture Series with Professor Brands

Another bonus is the three part lecture series with University of Texas history professor and author H.W. Brands. These lectures are a great addition for educators who need a concise overview of the time period and major topics/events featured in a particular volume. Professor Brands lectures could be shown to a class, but are better served as an overview for the educator. The format of these lectures combines Professor Brands recorded lecture with historical images and video.

The Three Parts include:

Volume 1: The Promise of ProgressVolume 2: War and Revolution Volume 3: New Gods for Old

Interactive Video Games

Each bonus disc comes with an interactive video game that allows the player (as Young Indy) to act out a specific adventure from the series. Indy must first choose what to bring on his adventure and then make important decisions along the way... in the style of The Oregon Trail. As they journey, players also learn about their surroundings, the people they meet, and the important events in which they are participating. These games are rightly suited for elementary to middle school level and include video clips from each corresponding film.

Volume 2: Special Delivery- Indy treks through the Congo to retrieve weapons (Oganga: The Giver and Taker of Life).

Volume 3: Hunting for Treasure- Indy and Remy hunt for the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye.

Volume 1: The Early Years

Chapters 1-5 take a nine year old Indy on a tour of the world with his parents and tutor, Miss Seymour. Join Indy as he explores ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, Africa, China, and Benares, India. Beginning with Chapter 6, sixteen year old Indy heads to New Mexico where he becomes involved in the Mexican Revolution and then travels to England to join the fighting in World War I.

Indy meets T.E. Lawrence and Howard Carter while visiting Egypt. It is here Indy is first introduced to archaeology and Ancient Egyptian culture. Later, Indy is captured by slave traders and must escape capture.

Passion for Life begins in Paris where Indy learns about art from a young Norman Rockwell and up-and-coming Pablo Picasso. Indy then travels to Africa where he goes on safari with Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Selous.

Indy discovers Renaissance art and architecture in Florence and meets famed composer, Giacomo Puccini. On a visit to Austria, Indy finds himself falling in love with Princess Sophie and seeking out advice from the likes of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

After a quick tour of Greece and lessons from Professor Jones in drama, philosophy, and democracy, Indy travels to Russia. There he decides to run away and happens upon a friendship with author Leo Tolstoy.

Indy meets Jiddu Krishnamurti while visiting Benares, India and learns about the religions of the world and their numerous commonalities. Later, while travelling through China Indy falls ill and is treated with traditional Chinese medicine.

Now 16, Indy becomes involved in the theft of a Thomas Edison invention and, with the help of his girlfriend, work to solve the crime. Later, Indy finds himself heading to New Mexico where he is captured by Mexican rebel, Pancho Villa.

Indy travels to Europe to join the Belgian Army in the Great War, but first stops in Ireland where rebellion is brewing. Once he arrives in England, Indy falls in love with a suffragette and joins her cause.

Volume 2: The War Years

Volume two takes Indy through World War I, where he experiences the horrors of war in Verdun, the Somme, Africa, the Middle East, and revolutionary Russia. Indy's war service thrusts him into the trenches, behind enemy lines as a spy, a POW camp, and high into the skies where he battles the infamous Red Baron.

Indy now serves as a runner on the battlefields of Verdun where he comes to grip with the futility of the Great War. On leave, he visits Paris and becomes entangled in an espionage dilemma with Mata Hari.

Indy and Remy are transferred to the African Front. There they are teamed up with Indy's old friend Frederick Selous and his "Old and the Bold" comrades and tasked with destroying the elusive Phantom Train of Doom and capturing German General, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.

Indy and Remy are ordered to travel across Africa's treacherous terrain to retrieve much needed artillery. Along the way their group falls victim to jungle diseases. Just when it seems all hope is lost they are rescued by humanitarian and doctor Albert Schweitzer who teaches Indy about the "reverence for life."

Now working with the French Secret Service, Indy is sent to the Lafayette Escadrille to assist in aerial reconaissance where a close encounter places Indy at the dinner table of the Red Baron. Later, Indy goes behind enemy lines to convince plane engineer, Anthony Fokker to defect to the Allies.

Danger lurks around every corner as Indy is once again sent behind enemy lines. This time he is tasked with arranging a separate peace with Austria's Emperor Karl I. Indy is then sent into the heart of Russia to gauge its growing revolution led by Bolshevik, Vladimir Lenin.

Volume 3: The Years of Change

Volume three sees Indy through the final months of World War I where he continues his work as a spy. After witnessing the failure of the Versailles Treaty, Indy heads home to America where new adventures await him in scandalous New York City, jazzed Chicago, and hilarious Hollywood.

The Italian Front brings death and destruction, but also love and friendship for Indiana Jones. Follow Indy as he competes with Ernest Hemingway for the heart of the beautiful Guiletta and then travels to Morocco to investigate a series of gun thefts.

At the Paris Peace Conference, Indy watches as the Allied powers restructure Europe, Africa, the Middle East and plant the seeds for World War II and lasting social unrest across the world. He then returns to the United States to find little has changed at home.

Now a student at the University of Chicago, Indy discovers his love of Jazz and befriends Jazz legend Sidney Bechet. He also gets caught up in the racial tension and organized crime that plagued 1920's Chicago.

About the Documentaries

Each volume of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones is packed with documentaries that serve as excellent educational resources. Each documentary ranges from 20-30 minutes in length and are well suited for viewing and discussion in a single class. In all there are 94 documentaries that accompany the three volumes of Young Indy.

Below is a list of the Documentary Dimensions. Many of the documentaries fall into multiple categories. Each dimension is sorted by Young Indy Chapter.

Exclusive previews are also available for each documentary!

Be sure to acknowledge the filmmakers who put these documentaties together by visiting our credits page.

Documentary preview for Lines in the Sand: The Middle East and the Great War. This documentary accompanies the Young Indy Chapter Daredevils of the Desert found in Volume 2 of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones.No video? Watch in Flash!

Indy Connections

In this section you will find current event articles that relate to the real-life events, topics, and people found in The Adventures of Indiana Jones. Educators can use these current events to connect our past with the present day. To see current articles for a specific Indy Adventure, please click the appropriate link below. For the most recent articles, please scroll down.

The Radical Paradox of Martin Luther King’s Devotion to Nonviolence

1/1/2015

The Mystery of the Blues

First there was the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act last July, one of the central achievements of Martin Luther King Jr.’s crusade. Then, last August, there was what has come to be known simply as “Ferguson,” the bitterness over a killing that reminded us that issues of race, violence and nonviolence are still simmering, still ready to explode at any time. And now in January, a major film called Selma will be released nationwide that dramatizes a key moment in the evolution of King’s struggle.

The Illustrious History of Misquoting Winston Churchill

1/1/2015

Love's Sweet Song

If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee,” Lady Astor once famously remarked to Winston Churchill. “If I were married to you,” he replied, “I’d drink it.”
This month marks 50 years since the death of one of history’s most quotable people. Churchill’s speeches, letters and published works contain an estimated 15 million words—“more than Shakespeare and Dickens combined,” London Mayor (and Churchill biographer) Boris Johnson tells Smithsonian.

Will the Search for Amelia Earhart Ever End?

1/1/2015

Attack of the Hawkmen

Do you want to see it?” Ric Gillespie asks, reaching for a black portfolio resting on the floor of his Pennsylvania farmhouse. He extracts a sheet of aluminum, about 18 by 24 inches—bent, dented, scratched and crisscrossed by 103 rivet holes, whose size, position and spacing he has studied for almost 25 years the way assassination buffs pore over the Zapruder film. And with good reason: If he’s right, this is one of the great historical artifacts of the 20th century, a piece of the airplane in which Amelia Earhart made her famous last flight over the Pacific Ocean in July 1937.

Stunning Black-and-White Photos of the Nazca Lines

12/23/2014

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The Nazca Lines have puzzled the world since Peruvian archeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe discovered them in the 1920s. Now they are back in the news after Greenpeace activists added a note to the famous geoglyphs during recent climate talks. Ignoring law that prohibits entrance to this delicate portion of the Peruvian desert, activists laid out cloth letters reading "Time for Change! The Future is Renewable. Greenpeace." Though the activists claim they were careful to not disturb anything, the area they entered is off-limits without a permit and special shoes: the ground around the lines is simply too dry and fragile to be trod upon without first taking painstaking precautions.

World's Most Ambitious Re-Creation of Prehistoric Cave Art to Open

12/19/2014

My First Adventure

On a September afternoon in 2013, Gilles Tosello sat sipping a cup of American-style coffee in his Toulouse studio, pondering the talents of cave painters who lived in France 36,000 years ago.
Tosello enjoyed a personal connection with those painters because he was the man the French Ministry of Culture and Communication had engaged to re-create their most famous works, some of the oldest, most beautiful, and best preserved cave art on Earth: the images in the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc. Its legendary Panel of Horses includes exquisite charcoal horse heads, snarling lions, and battling wooly rhinoceroses drawn across 475 square feet of undulating rock. Even more famous is another tableau he was hired to re-create, the spectacular Lion Panel, 750 square feet of prowling lions, baby mammoths, and charging rhinos. Tosello sighed.

12/17/2014

Passion for Life

News that Zimbabwe has captured dozens of baby elephants from the wild and plans to export them overseas ignited a firestorm of alarm in conservation circles, raising new questions about the policies that govern the trade of live elephants.
Revelations of the capture came to ­­light late last month in a report by an activist group called Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force.

Chocks away! British and German fighter planes from the First World War unveiled as part of new RAF Museum display

11/27/2014

Attack of the Hawkmen

The Royal Air Force Museum is set to open a new permanent exhibition to commemorate the role British airmen and aircraft played during the First World War.
The First World War in the Air exhibition, which opens a week today, will tell the incredible stories of men and women who served and protected our nation with the air force.

Behind Tomb Connected to Alexander the Great, Intrigue Worthy of "Game of Thrones"

11/21/2014

Travels with Father

Suspense is rising as archaeologists sift for clues to the identity of the person buried with pomp and circumstance in the mysterious Amphipolis tomb in what is now northern Greece. The research team thinks the tomb was built for someone very close to Alexander the Great—his mother, Olympias; one of his wives, Roxane; one of his favorite generals; or possibly his childhood friend and lover, Hephaestion.

World War One time capsule discovered in Germany

11/21/2014

The WWI Episodes

A hundred years after the outbreak of the First World War, builders renovating a historic castle in Germany’s Ruhr valley have found a time capsule that appears to have been left in memory of soldiers who died in the conflict.

11/15/2014

The WWI Episodes

Two enemy soldiers face each other, arms outstretched and about to shake hands.
This touching new statue captures one of the most incredible and moving moments in the history of warfare.
It was carved in memory of the Christmas Day truce of 1914 when British and German soldiers left their trenches and put their bloody conflict to one side to enjoy a spontaneous football match in no-man’s land.

Why Colors You See in an Art Museum Can’t Be Replicated Today

11/14/2014

Passion for Life

When I was 8 and on holiday in France with my parents, we went to Chartres Cathedral, just south of Paris. My father took me by the hand as we both stared at the blue glass casting reflections all over the limestone in the great medieval church.

Children’s Grave Offers Insight Into Earliest Americans

11/10/2014

My First Adventure

During the last ice age, two infants in what is now Alaska were laid to rest, precious hunting tools at their sides. Now, more than 11,000 years later, scientists announce the discovery of the tiny skeletons and their extraordinary burial spot—underneath the fire pit of an ancient house.

Amazon Warriors Did Indeed Fight and Die Like Men

10/29/2014

Treasure of the Peacock's Eye

The Amazons got a bum rap in antiquity. They wore trousers. They smoked pot, covered their skin with tattoos, rode horses, and fought as hard as the guys. Legends sprang up like weeds. They cut off their breasts to fire their bows better! They mutilated or killed their boy children! Modern (mostly male) scholars continued the confabulations. The Amazons were hard-core feminists. Man haters. Delinquent mothers. Lesbians.

WWI Canadian soldiers' remains identified

10/5/2014

The WWI Episodes

Nearly a century after they died in battle, the remains of unidentified Canadian soldiers who fought in the First World War are still being found in Europe.
Today the Department of National Defence released the names of four who died during the Battle of Amiens in August 1918.
Their resting place was discovered in 2006 by then 14-year-old Fabien Demeusere, while digging in his back garden in Hallu, France, 120 kilometres north of Paris.

What New Zealanders left behind in Arras, France

9/22/2014

Daredevils of the Desert

Between 1916 and 1917, the New Zealand Tunnelling Company linked a subterranean system of quarries beneath the Western Front, and named them after New Zealand places to help themselves stay oriented underground.
Originally mined for chalk to build the French town of Arras, the vast network of 200 year-old underground quarries was rediscovered in September 1916. The New Zealand tunnellers were tasked with linking and extending these old quarries in preparation for a major Allied attack on the Germans. Once complete, the quarried spaces would secretly house Allied troops before they took on the enemy in the ‘Battle of Arras’.

Trench Warfare in World War I Was a Smarter Strategy Than You Realize

9/22/2014

The WWI Episodes

History remembers trench warfare as wasteful, futile, and uninspired, but in reality it was a deeply thought-out system that underwent constant revision. Here's how it worked during World War I.
Top image: A painting by Captain Kenneth Keith Forbes shows a Canadian 6-inch howitzer supporting British troops in the attack on Thiepval on 16 July 1916 during the Somme offensive. Via Canadian Artillery in Action.
It was around this time 100 years ago that the mobile battlefield along the Western Front ground to a screeching halt — a 440 mile stretch that barely moved in the ensuing four years.

The Legend of What Actually Lived in the "No Man's Land" Between World War I's Trenches

9/8/2014

The WWI Episodes

During World War I, No Man’s Land was both an actual and a metaphorical space. It separated the front lines of the opposing armies and was perhaps the only location where enemy troops could meet without hostility. It was in No Man's Land that the spontaneous Christmas truce of December 1914 took place and where opposing troops might unofficially agree to safely remove their wounded comrades, or even sunbathe on the first days of spring.

First World War: how Telegraph readers saw it

9/2/2014

The WWI Episodes

Everyone knows about the horrors of life in the trenches of the First World War, but it’s only recently that the anxieties of people back home in Britain have started to be talked about.
At long last, those feelings are being aired more widely, thanks to a new anthology of letters written, at the time, to The Daily Telegraph. The message these missives impart is of a nation that was desperate to provide support, of any kind, to our brave boys fighting on just the other side of the Channel.

The Blockbuster World War I Film that Brought Home the Traumatic Impact of War

8/21/2014

The WWI Episodes

The United States had entered the war with high hopes and dreams—aiming to make the world “safe for democracy” as President Woodrow Wilson would proclaim, but by the 1920s there were strong feelings that the U.S. should never have gotten itself involved in the byzantine affairs of the European powers. Isolationist sentiments grew across the country especially after the rejection of the Versailles Treaty by the U.S. Congress in 1920. These feelings of bitterness and disappointment found their fullest expression in the literature of the day, written by members of what has become known as the “Lost Generation,” most notably John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

This Riveting Art From the Front Lines of World War I Has Gone Largely Unseen for Decades

8/12/2014

The WWI Episodes

In the words of one historian, “Art and war are old companions.” The United States government proved that nearly a century ago when it commissioned eight artists to go to war. Armed with sketchpads, charcoals, pastels and little to no military training, the artists embedded with the American Expeditionary Forces and sketched everything from rolling tanks to portraits of German prisoners. The War Department coordinated the program in the hopes that the artists could provide a historical record and galvanize support for the war.